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Mr. Monk and the Red-Headed Stranger
Mr. Monk and the Red-Headed Stranger is the twelfth episode of the first season of Monk. Plot After a rehearsal for his latest concert in San Francisco, Willie Nelson has an argument with Sonny Cross, his road manager, accusing him of stealing money. A few minutes later, Sonny is shot twice. Willie is seen running away from the scene of the crime, and a blind woman, Jennifer Mass is the only witness and swears that there was no one else in the alley. Everyone, including Stottlemeyer, is irritated by the fact that Monk refuses to accept the obvious: Willie Nelson is a killer. But both Monk and Trudy were big fans, and Monk can’t believe bad of him. He also notices something suspicious: Cross entered the alleyway because a note pinned on a nearby door invited him to a meeting; however, the note was addressed “J. Cross”; Sonny’s real first name was Jason, but Willie and seemingly everyone else has forgotten this. While Monk grows closer to Willie, he reveals that he plays the clarinet, and Willie invites the detective to play with his band during a live radio broadcast. Monk is ecstatic, even as the evidence against Willie mounts. Monk even wonders whether Ms. Mass, the blind woman, could be involved, but this seems impossible: Cross was shot twice, and the second time was at long range, a shot impossible for a blind person to make. When Mass identifies Willie’s voice as the man who threatened her to stay quiet after the shooting, Willie is arrested. He briefly does a guest appearance as a clarinette player, but he ended up not playing at all after, in an attempt to demonstrate how to play the instrument to Monk, one of the band players placed the blow area in his mouth, forcing Monk not to play due to his reluctance of allowing himself to touch things other people have touched. Benjy, after hearing about their meeting with Mass, asks to interview her for a school report on disabled persons (He was going to interview Monk, but as he says, “It only has to be two pages. Mr. Monk is a whole book.”) Monk and Sharona tag along as Benjy asks her some basic questions about her past life, and how she gets by nowadays. She explains that she lost her sight in a car accident that also killed her parents. Monk delves deeper into Cross’s past, and learns that he had been fired multiple times by singers for embezzling and an alcohol problem. He even served some jail time in Florida for vehicular manslaughter. That is when Monk solves the case. To prove his theory, he recruits a streaker who has been recently arrested for disrupting two police press conferences with his nakedness. When the streaker runs by Mass, sitting in the park, she turns her head in astonishment, revealing that she can see (to Sharona’s shock and embarrassment, she recognizes the streaker as her promising new boyfriend, Justin, who apparently has not told her everything about himself). Here's What Happened Sonny Cross was the drunk driver that killed Jennifer Mass's parents and robbed her of her sight. About a year before the murder, Mass slipped and fell inside a supermarket and bumped her head. The blow to her head unexpectedly reconnected one of her optic nerves, restoring the sight in one of her eyes. Knowing that Sonny toured a lot, she kept her restored sight a secret, and waited for him to come to San Francisco so she could kill him in revenge (or as she put it, true justice) – which is just what she did, by posting the sign and then shooting him in the alleyway. Unfortunately, Willie showed up after hearing the gunshots, and she had to protect herself by pretending he was the killer. Mass is grateful to Monk; she doesn’t regret killing Sonny – who served only 18 months in prison for killing her parents and blinding her, which she viewed as not being true justice – but was torn up about Willie having to take the blame. She accepts the fact that she’ll have to go to prison, and asks only one thing: that her cell has a window. Stottlemeyer promises to talk to the D.A. about extenuating circumstances. Exonerated, Willie performs a special favor for Monk: they go to Trudy’s grave and perform Willie’s breakthrough song "Blue Eyes Crying in the Rain" to her. 1.12